Chapter Five
Wolf had never been full of a great amount of empathy for others in his adult life. When he had been younger, empathy had been his friend and companion. He recalled walking with his aunt and uncle one day as they helped a poor old drunk on their way to their offices in Bristol.
“Do you know why we did such a thing, Julian?” No one in his life called Wolf by his Christian name but his aunt and uncle.
Wolf remembered shaking his head, as he held both his aunt and uncle’s hands, skipping between them. It was a feeling of family he had never known elsewhere, yet it pained him to think of all these years later.
“Because poor Mr. Maison was feeling a bit lost after his wife died. He hasn’t been taking care of himself as he should.
But if he has some hot meals away from the drink to sort himself out, your uncle can hire him back on a ship.
And perhaps the sea will do him some good.
” His aunt had squeezed his hand at that as a look passed between her and his uncle that Wolf only now recognized as true partnership.
His chest had ached for Mr. Maison, who had only ever been kind and friendly to him before he lost his wife, that he had lost something like what his aunt and uncle had between them.
Rarely these days did Wolf feel any sort of pang in his chest region that was not related to indigestion.
Yet, the realization that he had been the source of Lady Petra’s unease earlier that evening caused a subtle tightness in his throat, a feeling akin to a too-tight cravat, that reverberated deep within the cavern of his chest.
That uncomfortable twist was nothing compared to the aching agony at watching Lady Petra’s heart shatter in the span of a heartbeat.
Petra stood rooted to the grand staircase, a solitary statue of silk and honey, her features transfigured into a mask of unreadable stillness.
Then, in the blink of her eyelashes, her eyes betrayed her, cycling through shock, horror, and what he could only assume was devastation.
Wolf’s gaze had followed the trajectory of her own, ultimately landing upon his dearest friend in the world and her cousin in a dance that was so rare amongst the ton, one of genuine emotion. Dare he say…love?
As memories seemed to play across Petra’s mind’s eye, so too did Wolf recall moments in a different context now.
John suddenly wishing to go into the shipping business not long after the scandal with Baron Beckforth, the murder of Lady Beckforth, and Jillian’s quick departure to the Continent.
That faraway look in his friend’s gaze when he would often stare out the window or at the sea.
The way he had acted recently, as if waking from a long slumber to the most wonderful morning imaginable.
Wolf thought again of his favorite American poet, how he wrote of these unobtainable, lost women, like Annabel Lee.
Jillian must be John’s Annabel Lee. His lost Lenore.
And while so much made sense of John’s actions these last years, on the grand scale of right and wrong, he could forgive the man for not telling him.
Hell, he could forgive him for falling in love.
Although love remained a concept almost entirely foreign to Wolf, he was of the understanding that it was not something one intended to do.
Yet, the manner in which John’s distant love had so evidently hurt Petra was a far more difficult draught to swallow.
As if he could shield her cousin and his best friend from the peering eyes of the ton all at once, once they reached the first landing, he spun Lady Petra so that all that she could see was him.
For once, her face was no mask of cool politeness, transfigured instead into an expression so achingly lost that it rendered Wolf momentarily breathless.
It appeared as if the foundation she had been building a future upon had crumbled to the sea before her.
The sight of her shattered composure woke something foreign within him: a visceral need to right the wrongs visited upon her.
The desire to reduce John’s good-natured face to a pulp for causing her a moment of distress.
Where the devil did these thoughts come from?
The words came to him out of the ether, as absurd as they were: Longing.
He longed to move her so deeply, to see her care so deeply…
about him. Shaking himself from that unsettling thought, he refocused his attention upon her.
His feelings were inconsequential at that moment.
“What can I do?” He rasped, the question escaping him with an unvarnished sincerity that, for the first time in the span of their acquaintance, was entirely devoid of guile. “I shall call him out. I will do it.”
Wolf’s declaration drew Petra out of her fugue state. “Call him out…No, no, please, my lord. There was never—this is my fault. I was a silly girl who got carried away with an idea of a man she did not truly know.”
Wolf had never heard her speak in such a way about herself and the twist in the center of his chest tightened and crackled like a wildfire.
“Lady Petra, you are many things, but I do not think a silly girl caught in a flight of fancy is one of them.”
Despite her petite size and fairy-like appearance, Petra squared her shoulders as if she were the Queen herself. “I need to right this, my lord. To save them from any scandal.”
Below them, the waltz had ended, unbeknownst to the two of them. Petra’s gaze scoured the cavernous room as if searching for John or Jillian.
“You need to save them?” Wolf searched her face as his mind was abruptly transported to Bristol, once more to the quiet strength of his aunt and uncle. As he drank in the sight of the brave lady before him, that ball of heat within his chest contracted painfully.
He had always been wrong when he told himself his reasoning for being against union between Petra and John. For so long he had convinced himself he had been against their union because she did not deserve John.
What utter rot. Aside from his aunt, he doubted he had ever known a true lady.
The truth was that John had never deserved Petra. And yet she is breaking her own heart over him and trying to save him in the same fell swoop.
Foolish, fierce angel. “I will find him. I will help you, my lady.”
As if only noticing him then, Petra’s eyes widened and she placed a small hand on his forearm, sending a delicious, if untimely, flame up Wolf’s arm.
“Thank you, my lord. This is not their fault. They deserve no censure for l-love never does, nor should it. I will do everything in my power so that they can,” Petra offered a small nod, a flush of returning color washing over the honeyed warmth of her features as she finished. “Be together.”
Unlike this fierce angel beside him, Wolf was not quite so forgiving of his friend’s actions. “Let me speak with him first.”
Petra tightened her grip on him. “You will not call him out.”
“I will not call him out.” Wolf repeated and he twisted his arm so that he could kiss her hand.
His lips lightly grazed her gloved knuckle, a gesture he didn’t fully understand, yet it resonated within the cavern of his chest as a silent, unwavering promise.
To protect her and that big heart of hers that could break and forgive in an instant.
“But I did not vow to hit him,” he said under his breath as he turned away.
After scanning the ballroom, Wolf caught sight of a tall gentleman with a boyish cowlick exiting to the Bromley gardens.
His gaze went to the French doors that led to the garden and Lady Petra’s followed.
He looked back at her as if to tell her to give him a few minutes with John, and somehow, although no words passed between them, she understood, given her clipped nod in his direction.
He put away for later any warmth that wordless exchange had caused him, that he could express so much to her without speaking a word and strode purposefully toward the French doors.
Watching his oldest friend pace the garden pensively, Wolf was seized by an unholy sort of rage.
He was not inclined to fight, as he had never experienced strong enough emotions to warrant it.
And yet, observing John in solitary repose, evidently lost in the contemplation of his own lost Lenore rather than the profound devastation he had visited upon a lady who merited none of it, Wolf felt his carefully cultivated composure fracture.
A fierce, unbidden rage took hold, his fingers clenching into a rigid fist as he stalked toward his unsuspecting friend.
Wolf’s knuckles cracked with pain as his fist connected with the side of John’s face.
While he was well acquainted with the art of pugilism, having honed such skills amidst the rough-and-tumble docks of his youth, the sudden ache served as a jarring reminder that it had been an age since he had possessed reason to exert such a visceral brand of justice.
“What the devil was that in there? How could you do that to her?” he roared as John stumbled backward.
Clutching the side of his face, John gaped at him in shock. “You’ve never hit me before.”
“Well, you’ve never acted dishonorably before,” Wolf muttered. “That is supposed to be my milieu.”
“What was that for?”
“How could you do that to her?” Wolf repeated. How did John not understand how devastating his actions were?
“To Jillian?”
That he was still only thinking of Jillian made Wolf’s blood boil in fury.
“Not her,” he bit out. “Lady Petra. How could you do that to Lady Petra?”
“I…I merely danced with her cousin.”
Possessed of a keen mind, the John that Wolf knew was seldom so slow to apprehend the obvious. Clearly his friend was in a state of willful denial.
“You did not just dance with her cousin. Anyone with eyes could see you staked a claim. She’s it. She’s what you’re thinking of when you look off at the sea, but you never talk about it. Not once in years. Not even to your best friend.”